Shyster in the Irrational Pet Peeves thread wrote:I don’t care who killed John F. Kennedy. I don’t care if it was the Russians; I don’t care if it was the Cubans; I don’t care if it was the Mob; I don’t care if it was Lyndon Johnson; I don’t care if it was the vengeful spirit of Marilyn Monroe. I don't care.

I got big into this on the 25th anniversary, read half a dozen conspiracy books and whatnot. None of them make any sense when they start talking about who actually did it (one even asserts that Kennedy was shot by the Secret Service from within the motorcade itself), but there are some serious questions over some of the physical evidence. The only one that really sticks in my craw is CE399 - so so-called 'magic bullet'.

I don't have a problem with the flight path of the bullet being odd (which is easily explained), I don't even have a problem with one bullet causing seven non-fatal wounds in two large-framed adult men and remaining 'pristine' (the word often associated with this piece of evidence, even tho it actually is somewhat distorted). What I have a problem with is the way the Warren Commission (thanks, Arlen Specter) contrived to make the crime fit the evidence rather than seek evidence that explains the crime. And that the bullet cited as CE399 didn't lose enough of its grain weight to have left all the bullet fragments recovered from Kennedy and Connolly.... which, for the single-bullet theory to be correct it would have had to have done. I believe there was more material recovered from Connolly's wrist wound than CE399 lost, never mind the fragments taken out of the other six wounds this missile allegedly caused.

Some say that this fact alone points to a conspiracy. I don't go that far, preferring instead to simply call it shoddy investigatory practices.

I don't have a hard time believing Oswald pulled the trigger in Dallas, but I also don't think it out of the realm of possibility to think he wasn't alone.

It's not a conspiracy theory to state that the Warren Report is bunk. And it is. The pristine bullet that tif mentioned is beyond reason (not to mention the circumstances regarding it's recovery).

It matters less to me who did it than the fact that the government was able to successfully manufacture a narrative which has stood as the official record despite its implausibility. IMO it should have ramifications through today as to how much one should trust the voracity of any claims made by our government. *cough* Iranian nuclear program *cough*

Everybody's favorite political quote machine Larry Sabato had an interesting tidbit in his new JFK book about the scanner traffic audio during the shooting, which was crucial to the HSCA investigation.

"His conclusion: Contrary to the 1979 report, sounds previously believed to be gunshots, which led the committee to conclude that assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted in tandem with a co-conspirator, are actually mechanical sounds from a motorcycle policeman, who was located miles away from the assassination scene."

"His conclusion: Contrary to the 1979 report, sounds previously believed to be gunshots, which led the committee to conclude that assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted in tandem with a co-conspirator, are actually mechanical sounds from a motorcycle policeman, who was located miles away from the assassination scene."